Posts Tagged social media

As you begin finals, we want to wish you good luck in the last days of the fall semester. Between study sessions, you might also start to think about how to use the upcoming break to your full advantage.

During the semester you may have felt too busy to begin delving into career exploration or preparation, but the month-long break is a great time to:

Refine your resume

Research and apply to job or internship opportunities

Contact a UVM grad for a job shadow or informational interview

Create or refine your LinkedIn profile

Clean up your social media presence

Schedule an appointment with a career counselor to talk about your 4 Year Plan and career goals

Remember that the Career Center is open for most of winter break, and phone appointments are available for those outside of the Burlington area.

So best of luck with your finals, enjoy your break, and use the time to catch up!

Whatever you are doing this summer (job, internship, volunteering, travel), you are probably meeting interesting people. Stay connected with your summer connections through LinkedIn. Here are 5 simple tips to keep in mind as you network on LinkedIn:

1. Connect with a purpose. LinkedIn is a professional social network, not a personal social network. Don’t spam professionals with connections requests, be thoughtful and connect with a purpose.

2. Include a personal note in your connection request. Why are you reaching out to connect? To learn more about a members career path? To set up a 15 minute call to learn about your prospective professional connection? State your purpose in the connection request.

3. Participate in group conversations that align with your professional goals.

4. Follow the companies you aspire to work for and learn more about.

5. Share relevant, professional, through provoking content. Look like a thought leader as a young professional.

I build and maintain relationships with our clients. I help ensure our clients see success from our tools and I am constantly in contact with them. I support a team of six relationship managers and all of their accounts. We collaborate to create a strategic plan for their accounts.

Tell us about your path to this position.

If you told me during senior year of college that I would be working at LinkedIn a year after graduation, I would have called you crazy. I spent every summer in college interning to find out what I was interested in. I learned a lot about the corporate world and myself. Through that experience I started to figure out what I liked and didn’t like and what skills came naturally and the ones I needed to work on.

During my senior year, I really started to think about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be in the marketing/sales industry, but that was vague. After graduation, I spent three months networking with everyone and anyone to pinpoint what I wanted. In September of 2011, I landed a job at a small digital video branding agency. Because it was so small, I took on a lot of responsibilities and learned a lot.

After nine months, I was recruited by someone at LinkedIn. I never expected to be recruited for a role, I only knew myself as an active candidate. Since starting at LinkedIn, I haven’t stopped learning. Every day there is something new to discover. For me, the learning curve hasn’t stopped. I continuously try to find new ways to learn.

What advice do you have for students searching for jobs or internships in your field?

Three words: network, network, network. That word was said more times in my house than any other word, both throughout my college years and to this day. From the beginning of my college career, my dad encouraged me to connect with different people in all different roles. After meeting with just one person, I would have a list of 3-5 other people to connect with. Each of those people would have a list of people for me to connect with. It was a domino effect. Just because someone isn’t at the company you want to be at, doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who is. You never know who you’re going to meet and who they happen to know. Networking isn’t just about getting a job; networking can help you with becoming a member of a board, getting a new client, a recommendation, grad school and much more.

How did your time at UVM, both in and out of the classroom, prepare you for your position?

My time at UVM prepared me for this position in more ways than I can imagine. In the classroom, a lot of my classes required group projects. In my current role, while I make my own calls, we all collaborate together on tips and strategies, emails that work and that don’t work, we even help each other make calls. Outside of the classroom, it was meeting so many different people. The majority of my friends are from the New England area and all come from different backgrounds. They all have taught me different things and honestly, made my four years at UVM amazing. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t reference someone from UVM in some sort of way.

Research Companies and Career Fields. Start making a short list of organizations that you would like to work for. Get to know some people who work there! (Look on Linked in to see if any UVM Alumni work at your target company.)

The most important element of your job search is to keep looking! You never know where you will find “the one,” that first great opportunity after college. Maybe it will happen at the upcoming Spring Job Fair!